Indy Lights Road America Qualifying for Race 1 – Results

By Patrick Stephan

Danial Frost – Photo credit: Gavin Baker Photography/Road to Indy

The Indy Lights presented by Cooper Tires qualifying session got started promptly at 2:30pm Central Time…for some of the field. The 30 minute session saw several drivers sit on pit lane for most of the session including Kyle Kirkwood. Others put in a quick lap early and then sat on pit lane themselves.

Devlin DeFrancesco had the top spot with 1:56.0898 for much of the session. Kirkwood finally went out with around 10 minutes remaining and promptly went P3 and just 0.0335 off P1.

With 6 minutes to go, DeFrancesco maintained the P1 spot over Danial Frost, then Kirkwood, Megennis, and Peroni.

With four minutes to go, David Malukas jumped to P4.

Then with a little over 2 minutes to go, Danial Frost moved to P1 with a 1:55.5938, while Malukas moves to P2. DeFrancesco, Kirkwood (still having done just 4 laps), and Sowery now round out the Top-5.

Point leader Linus Lundqvist was 7th at the time, but would jump to 5th with his final lap.

The top four were crazy close until Frost put in his pole winning time, gapping Malukas by 0.4766 – nearly half a second, a pretty large margin in this series. Just a little over a tenth separates 2nd through 6th.

This is Danial Frost’s first career Indy Lights pole, and he comes in to the race weekend 7th in points 72 back of Lundqvist.

During his pit lane interview he said he didn’t do anything special on that quick lap, he just did what he always does “go fast.” He said they have been working really hard lately and now are just one step away from the top step of the podium.